We can well understand that the choice of a man of such uncommon intellectual gifts as a tutor, at a time when everything was expected to give way to classical culture, found many eulogists; and the words of Cristoforo Landino in his dedication of Virgil’s works to Piero de’ Medici do not stand alone. Piero was wanting neither in understanding nor the desire to learn, and the instruction he received was not wasted so far as concerns the elegant culture which was fast superseding the more practical education of older times. But the essential principle of a serious moral view of the world Angelo Poliziano could not give to his pupil, for he had it not himself. The father rejoiced in the progress of the son, promoted as it was by the liberal, scientific, artistic and social movement of which the house of Medici formed the centre. Piero, like his father, entered life early, and was thus prepared for the position he was in some degree destined to inherit. He always showed interest in scientific matters. It was at his desire that his tutor made the collection of letters above mentioned, which, however, were not printed till after Poliziano’s death and Piero’s banishment; a collection which, like many of the kind, contains much that for the writer’s honour had better have remained unprinted. But posterity has not confirmed Poliziano’s judgment on his pupil. It was the judgment of a courtier. In Piero, thus he wrote to Pico della Mirandola,[56] there lived again the spirit of his father, the virtue of his grandfather, the humanity of his great-grandfather, the honesty, piety, generosity, and high-mindedness of all his ancestors.